By Danial Dzulkifly
SHAH ALAM, August 1 — Menteri Besar Dato’s Seri Amirudin Shari has backed Landasan Lumayan Sdn Bhd’s (LLSB) decision to take legal action against individuals who have been making defamatory remarks concerning the Selangor Maritime Gateway (SMG) project under its watch.
He noted that despite the state government having provided its explanation over the allegations in the state assembly, certain parties continue to issue slander without conducting due diligence.
“In fact, the matter has been answered by (state executive councillor for infrastructure and public facilities) Izham Hashim several times in the state legislative assembly, yet these people are too lazy (to bother). They didn’t care to read Hansard for the reply.
“(It appears that) even PN leaders dare not to regurgitate the issue to the point that they had to hire someone from outside to do the deed for them,” he told a press conference after launching the Pakatan Harapan (Harapan) and Barisan Nasional manifesto for Selangor at the Dewan Raja Muda Musa, here, last night.
Amirudin was referring to false allegations made by a blogger, who lives outside the Malaysian jurisdiction, against him and the state government that the implementation of the RM700 million SMG project did not go through a transparent tendering process.
In a statement to Selangor Journal yesterday, LLSB said it will be serving a writ of summons to the parties in question within a week from today.
It added that the decision was made taking into consideration that the slanders were malicious in nature and intended to tarnish the company’s reputation.
“LLSB has received several reports of old accusations and allegations about SMG being reposted by irresponsible quarters on Facebook and Youtube.
“The allegations and slanders were clearly an attempt by certain quarters to rehash the same issue over and over again despite us having provided an explanation previously,” it said.
LLSB, which is wholly owned by the Selangor Menteri Besar (Incorporated) or MBI, did not specifically name the individuals that have been identified to have made the comments on social media.
Meanwhile, commenting on the controversial Petaling Jaya Dispersal Link Expressway (PJD Link), Amirudin reiterated that the state government decided to scrap the project after the developer failed to meet conditions set out by the administration.
In particular, he said the state was unsatisfied by the impact assessment reports that were submitted.
He said the project would have been allowed to carry on had the developers abide by all requirements.
“Our priority is always putting the people first,” he said, adding that the cancellation did not have legal repercussions.
In a statement earlier today, Amirudin had said that the construction of the PJD Link was originally given principle approval by the Cabinet on November 12, 2017, before the proposal was submitted to the Selangor Economic Action Council on September 3, 2020.
The plan was later tabled in Cabinet on November 12, 2021 for conditional approval, to ensure that the proposal meets the conditions of the state government.
Following this, Amirudin said the then Perikatan Nasional (PN) federal government inked a concession agreement with the developer on April 5, 2022, on condition that the company conducts its environmental, social and traffic impact assessments.
However, the menteri besar pointed out that the social impact assessment report, in particular, was found to have failed to meet conditions.
